Viresco - Concept Portrait

Been working on more concept art and I decided to make my OC Vir my central piece this time. It's my first time painting a person using a grayscale-to-color method in a purely digital canvas.

I'm feeling all these goosebumps from just looking at this painting. Feels like the time I made a digital watercolor painting of my other OC Sylvette for Digitober last year. This is the kind of stuff I only imagined in my head and seeing it in front of me, made by my own hand, feels unbelievable. Now I really feel like I did her some justice by painting her like this. I say some, because I feel like this painting can still be better improved upon, though I didn't want to overly stress on a first attempt for longer than I should.

I didn't have any intent on painting her with any clothes on, but I'll probably make a separate version with her being clothed. Also did some messing around with the smudge tool to blend everything better.

Now that this is out of the way, I should definitely hop back into making my comics. I can make more concept paintings later, but I'd really like to get a move on with my comics first. 😅

Rainy Day

I was watching an art stream by Dave Greco yesterday after the End of Dragons livestream on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. I was utterly fascinated by how he painted his piece of Taimi and Gorrik on a skiff, and I spent a good extra two hours awake just to watch him paint. I didn't finish the whole stream but I felt so elated afterward from what I learned. I was so excited that I just wanted to make something out of it as soon as possible, which kept me up for another hour (not that I made anything at that time as I really needed sleep, and in retrospect I should have probably just kept watching instead 😅).

Concept art painting for me is a completely different ball game considering the kind of art I post on my website. I've also considered it to be something I had a very difficult time getting into because of how breathtaking and overwhelming a lot of concept art pieces can be. It felt beyond my reach and I admittedly felt rather intimidated to just, well, start something with it. Despite this, I wanted to tackle this kind of art style someday, see what works, and have a better insight into the creative process of a concept artist. Sticking around for that art stream yesterday felt like just what I needed to get my feet wet.

This piece isn't anything flashy or whatnot; rather, it's a first step into the foray of concept art painting and I want to explore this art style further. Taking a second look at this now, I can definitely see a couple of mistakes... 😅 Still, I'm pleased with my first attempt, and I'm looking forward to doing more. 😊

Long Ago in Gatorville (Part 7)

Would you believe it? We're already halfway through this story arc! 👏 I'm so proud I haven't caved into sheer laziness yet... Except I've been working on other art pieces instead and therefore have been inevitably delaying everything anyway. 😅 Still, more strips are on the way! Just trying not to let the rain dampen my motivation...😣

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🐊 Gator Buddies 🐊

Long Ago in Gatorville
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Tarocheeki's Farm

"This is skritt farm! Grow army to help make new home safer!"

"Grow an army?" Jarus asked incredulously. "How is that possible?"

"Trust me," Tarocheeki grinned. "You'll see!"

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Woo! More Guild Wars 2 art from my favorite part of the Maguuma Jungle! ✨

Just for the sake of context: this skritt, Tarocheeki, runs a farm where he grows these mushroom creatures with the intent of using them to help protect Tarir. At the height of the battle in Tarir, these same mushrooms can be seen on the west quadrant of the city spreading a bunch of spores on the ground. Players transform into mushrooms using these spores and blow up on the Octovine to peel off its slime layers so that it can be vulnerable to attack.

I've said before that Southwatch is my favorite in Auric Basin, but Westwatch takes the cake of having the most colorful cast of non-playable characters. I can't get over how the skritt interact so well with the Exalted and show how multifaceted these golden sentinels can be despite their overly serious nature. I want to explore this further in future artwork.

I was struggling to figure out how I was supposed to go with the style and coloring of this piece. Initially, I wanted to do something akin to watercolor painting like here, but then I thought of just outlining everything in Photoshop first. I painted the base colors and then attempted to do the watercolor technique to add some depth. But the style turned so vastly different and the outline needed to be redone again in pencil (or with a pencil brush) for it to work. At the same time, I also wanted to keep the outline as is and didn't want to start over. Ultimately, I scrapped the watercolor idea and was stumped for a good couple of hours thinking about how to move forward.

I showed the piece to my girlfriend, who seemed to understand what I was trying to do with my art. She suggested I tried doing ink shading techniques for Tarocheeki's body, and to my surprise, it looked very pleasant to look at. This same technique didn't seem to work with everything else in the background, though. I had the cel-shaded art style of Borderlands in mind and after a little more experimenting, I got the aesthetic I wanted in the background. 😌

The band on Tarocheeki's wrist also reads "黄金の谷 (おうごんのたに | ougon no tani)" which just means golden/auric valley. Just really wanted to throw in the map's name written in Japanese on this piece, and thought the wristband was the best place to put it on. 😄

7/6/2021 Changelog

Hey, guys! It's been a while since I made one of these. If you've been snooping around the site for a while, you'll notice things look different than before. I've been up to some sprucing up my site a lot and a bunch of other things!

What's new?

💎 Crossover logo! OH MY GOD. FINALLY. What was a mere doodle is now fully digitized and is also now the official logo of the site. Awesome. 👏

🌃 New site background! Finally got my ass to figure out how making patterns in Photoshop work. This was meant to be on top of the page on a banner but I decided I would do something else for it instead. At least now I have a pleasant background I can be content with for a while!

🏁 New header! I changed the home page header on the site to match the font that comes with the logo!

🌌 Page called "The Backstory" added. I put up an about page with a short backstory behind why the site is called Crossover, and why you keep seeing these purple crystals all over the website. Check it out here!

🚫 Ko-fi shop removed. My Ko-fi shop is temporarily down until I settle some business-related things locally. Licenses, documentation, all that boring business stuff. It's a pain, but it's necessary.

Soon on Crossover...

🎨 MOAR ART! Gator Buddies comics are well underway, because I know that's what most of y'all are really waiting for. 😂 In between those, I'm also working on some fan art of Guild Wars 2 and a couple of artworks to commemorate the summer. 🌅

🧣 MOAR MERCH! That is, as soon as my business stuff is all sorted. Once that's done with, I'll be working on a lot of merch with my content slapped right onto them!

Thank you to everyone who have continually been showing their support for my work! It's very fulfilling knowing that my dreams of being an official freelance artist selling merch online now nearly within reach!

-Zip

Long Ago in Gatorville (Part 6)

Next update is here! 👏 It's depressing, but it's here!

I wasn't sure about how I could draw Pudgy's dad without getting overly graphic. So I just drew him like that. I can't help feeling how half-assed it is... 😅

Wanna know what else is here? Summer in the northern hemisphere! 🌅 And I've got a bunch of ideas I want to draw to commemorate the season. ⛵ They will likely keep me away from working on the comic for a bit, but I'll try to keep updating regularly!

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🐊 Gator Buddies 🐊

Long Ago in Gatorville
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